Expanded Epic Game: The core game experience has been greatly expanded with the addition of new technologies, 27 new units, 13 new buildings, and 9 new Wonders. Religion: A righteous people will seek out Faith to found a Pantheon of the Gods. As your Faith becomes stronger, you can cultivate Great Prophets who build on these simple beliefs to create a religion that you can customize and enhance as desired Enhanced Diplomacy and Espionage: Establish embassies at foreign courts for closer ties (or clandestine operations). Naval Combat: Your navy is now split into two different ship types, melee and ranged. This means that no coastal city should be considered safe, and can now fall to a surprise naval attack. World Domination: The fight for world domination is now more dynamic than ever before. The Gods and Kings expansion features a reworked combat system and AI that puts more emphasis on a balanced army composition. Sid Meier's Civilization V: Gods and Kings is the first expansion pack for Civilization V - the critically acclaimed 2010 PC Game of the Year. This robust expansion covers the entire scope of time from founding your first Pantheon of the Gods and spreading religion across the world, to deploying your spies in enemy cities in order to steal information and technology. As you move through the ages, you’ll interact with new types of city-states, engage in new city-state quests and global competitions, and master exciting new systems for land and naval combat. Civilization V: Gods and Kings will also include nine new civilizations, nine new wonders, three original scenarios, and dozens of new units, buildings, and techs that will offer even more ways for players to expand their empire and dominate the world. Sid Meier's Civilization V: Gods and Kings is the first official expansion pack for the Turn-Based Strategy game, Sid Meier's Civilization V.* It features the introduction of religion as a major gameplay component to the game, through a faith-based mechanism. It also adds additional diplomatic abilities to those found in the base game. Additional features include, a variety of benefit types for the establishment and adoption of religion, spies that both level with mission completion and that can be a liability if captured, several new playable civilizations, improved battle abilities, and new units, buildings and wonders. Expanded Power with Religion and Enhanced Diplomacy The Sid Meier's Civilization V: Gods and Kings expansion pack* introduces the power of religion and improved diplomatic abilities to Civilization V. Religion, used as a major tool, was left out of the 2010 base game release, but now joins culture, technology, diplomacy, and warfare as the fifth pillar of the game's turn-based statecraft and empire building game mechanic. Use of religion begins during a civilization's infantcy, with the player interweaving select core beliefs with particular realities of their civilization. This in turn unifies people and generates faith, setting the stage for the emergence of unit's like The Great Prophet, Missionaries and The Inquisitor, along with the founding of a religion. Religions available initially correlate to actual world religions such as Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Shinto, etc., but they are designed to be renamed and customized with player chosen tenets. Civilizations that found religions enjoy certain exclusive benefits, while a later series of benefits connected to a religion can be enjoyed by any civilization that is converted to it. This includes rival civilizations. As the timeline of the game progresses to the renaissance and beyond, religion becomes less important, but remains a surprisingly powerful tool. Introduces religion to Civ V statecraft gameplay tactics. View larger Improved use of spies allows for even more in-depth strategy. View larger The Sid Meier's Civilization V: Gods and Kings expansion pack also improves on the base game's use of diplomacy, especially in the area of espionage. With spies players can do a wide range of things, including steal technologies, provide intelligence, rig elections, and even counter the actions of foreign spies planted domestically in their own cities. New Unit Battle Abilities and New Civilzations Although religion and diplomacy are potent tools of state craft, war is inevitable. This is why Sid Meier's Civilization V: Gods and Kings includes expanded abilities to units in battle. Improvements include: expanded general health of units to ensure more time for strategy and changes to forces during exchanges, the inclusion of early multi-winged aircraft, expanded offensive abilities of naval units pitted against other ships and against land tagets, and improved defensive abilities of ground units during transport by sea. Gods and Kings also includes additional civilization not included in the initial release of the base game. In many cases, following the theme of the expansion pack these new peoples possess an extreme potential for influence by/and manipulation of religion. A sampling of the new civilizations available include, the Celts lead by Boudicca, the warrior queen of the proto-British Iceni tribe, and the Maya featuring Pacal the Great the long-time ruler of the powerful city-state of Palenque. System Requirements

Key Game Features Introduces religion, wielded through faith, as a crucial tool of the state into the Civilization V game franchise A multi-layered belief system that allows for civilization-specific benefits, as well as benefits to any game civilization holding that belief Changing benefits to religion depending on the time period of the game An improved diplomacy and espionage component that allows for technology theft, foreign intelligence and election rigging, and domestic counter espionage Improved capabilities of battle units including, improved general health, the inclusion of early aircraft, and expanded abilities of naval and ground units Several new civilizations available for play, including Celtic - featuring the warrior queen of the proto-British Iceni tribe Boudicca, and Mayan, featuring Pacal the Great the longtime ruler of Palenque Many new units, buildings and wonders Additional Screenshots

As of the date of this review, the base Civilization V game has an overall rating of 2.5 on Amazon. This, perhaps more than everything else, goes to show the wide divergence of opinions directed towards the latest Civilization installment.While the complaints directed towards Civ V by its critics are diverse, the one heard the most often is that the game has been simplified too much. "Dumbed down" is the colloquial expression heard most often about the game by it..